


We got that fire, fire, fire (and we gonna let it burn)

by Trojie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bloodplay, Branding, Dubious Consent, Hallucifer, Hell, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, M/M, Painplay, Past Torture, So Wrong It's Right, Torturer Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell marked them both, and now they mark each other. Dean Winchester is well-schooled enough in sick irony to know that it's almost funny, that to help Sam get over his tour in Hell, Dean has to relive his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We got that fire, fire, fire (and we gonna let it burn)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nu_breed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nu_breed/gifts).



> Written for my hc_bingo 2013 card, prompt 'branding'. Title from 'Burn' by Ellie Goulding. Painplay, knifeplay, bloodplay, spanking, burns, branding (all consensual but the reliability of that consent is dubious due to pre-existing mental trauma), sibling incest.

Dean thought the universe was done playing nasty bait-and-switch jokes on him and Sam. He thought he was done with Hell. He's thought a lot of things though, over the years, and he's been wrong about most of them. 

He sharpens a stiletto blade, sitting at a motel room's crappy dining table, and tries not to think about how Alastair would crow about this. He _can't_ think about that. He can't think about anything right now except logistics. He needs to do this right. He needs to be strong for Sammy.

Dean Winchester is well-schooled enough in sick irony to know that it's almost funny. To help Sam get over his tour in Hell, Dean has to relive his own. Over and over.

Alastair would have loved this.

***

It's so hard not to see Sam's back as a canvas. That's how he was trained. Skin's for marking. Most people are blank and skin-tone, like nothing ever happened to them until they got to Hell and someone - Dean - coloured them in. 

Sam, though, Sam's got scars, and they make it easier. He isn't blank. This isn't some faceless, nameless soul under Dean's hands. This is _Sam_. Only Sam has this particular patchwork of weak scars, the colourless kind that only show up because they change the texture of your skin, that you can only see in certain light - little stuff, stuff that healed well - with the big things overlaid. 

There's a raised rash that won't fade from going through a window badly one time, and Dean had to pick out glass piece by piece - a clawmark still all red over his hip where a black dog tried to take a scoop out of his innards and only technically missed - and worst, biggest of all, ragged and oblique across the sleek line of his backbone, the remains of the knife-cut that started it all. 

All the shit that ever happened to them, all that Destiny, started with this - when Sam died in Dean's arms in a cold fucking mud puddle in a shitty abandoned town. That's when the switch flipped and neither of them could keep up any more. Because Dean failed.

Dean will never, ever, let himself fail Sam again. 

He whets his knife distractedly, because while he knows what he's got to do, it's hard to start - but that's too quiet, and he can hear Sam's breathing. It's harsh, laboured. He's not tied down because Dean won't do that, won't _ever_ put Sam in a place he can't escape, and his hands flutter, clench into fists and unclench again. His eyes are glazed. Seeing things, Dean guesses. Sam's always seeing things, these days.

Any other person, any other situation, Dean would think Sam was scared of what was about to happen. But when Dean steps closer and actually touches him, flattens a hand to his broad, sweat-streaked shoulder, Sam calms just a little. When Dean lays the blade of the knife flat against Sam's skin, Sam's fingers stop twitching and lie still against the bedspread. 

Dean knows what Sam needs, but God, it is so hard to give it to him. 

He puts the knife aside. Can't start like that, zero to sixty way too fast. Not if he wants to keep his control, and he has to. This is Sam, and Sam needs him to be precise, and careful, and calculated. So he starts with the flat of his hand. 

Sam cries out when Dean places the first slap against his ribcage. Cries out, sweet and low, and arches into it. 'Dean?' he says, like he's waking up. 

Dean doesn't reply, just lays another one on him harder. His handprints come up red. Sam's expecting it this time, grunts with the force of Dean's blow rather than keening, but he moves up again, following the arc of Dean's hand. 'Dean,' he says again, and it's heavy with something Dean can't admit to recognising. 

He's supposed to be Sam's brother. He shouldn't know what Sam's lust sounds like. He shouldn't know that Sam kinks on this shit. Doesn't matter, anyway, because that's another thing that Dean won't ever do. Sam's not in his right mind when he asks for this, that's the _point_ , and Dean isn't going to take advantage. 

_'Dean,'_ Sam moans when the slaps ring true and hollow over his bones, so close under his skin here. 

'Shhh,' Dean murmurs, Sam's skin gone red and warm and perfect for him, a canvas primed for a work of art. 'I got you, Sammy,' he says, and he picks up the knife. 

Sam bleeds easy, he's used to being cut - injury and surgery and for proof of his own humanity - and he's used to pain. Sam stays still when Dean pushes into him on the point of a blade. In Hell, at the beginning when they used knives on Dean, before Alastair, they told him he wasn't any fun. He didn't squirm or cry or beg, and that made him no fun. Sam's the same, not that Dean would think this was fun anyway.

Sam never cries, but he _moans_ all relieved into it at the start, louder and louder as Dean cuts into him, and eventually he goes shiver-quiet and church-still for Dean the longer he works. He twitches his hips into the bedspread, and Dean ignores the way the scent of Sam's sweat, Sam's come, mingles with Sam's blood in the air. 

Other things he ignores - how hard it makes him to hear Sam lucid, alive, hungry, _satisfied_. How much he wants this to be something other than what it is. How hard he has to ignore the sound of his name in Sam's voice, breathed out on a moan. 

'Dean,' says Sam when Dean's cleaning off the blades he's used, when the blood is crusting on Sam's back and they're in that magic space between the pain and the worse part, when Sam's eyes glaze back over because Lucifer's talking to him again. 'Hey,'

'Hey,' says Dean, his voice already catching in his throat. Sam sounds like himself again and Dean almost hates it because it makes his heart swell with hope even though he knows it's just gonna go away again. 'How're you doing, champ?'

'Yeah, good,' says Sam, levering himself up on his elbows and wincing the way he used to after a long run or a hard fight, one they'd won. He doesn't ask how Dean is. Dean's glad. He doesn't want to lie and doesn't have the words for the truth. 

'Good,' Dean says instead, and puts down the knife he was holding, meaning to get a washcloth from the bathroom. Sam grabs his wrist. 

'Thank you,' he says, deep and earnest. 'I mean it. I know this isn't -'

Dean shakes him off. 'I gotta finish cleaning up,' he says, rougher than he meant to. Sam's expression gets soft and resigned. 

'Can I,' he says and then clamps his mouth shut, clenches his jaw like he never meant to even start that sentence. That gets Dean to stop and turn back, the idea that Sam might need and hide it. 

'Just ask, Sammy,' Dean says. He shrugs, openhanded and with Sam's blood still ground into the quicks of his fingers. 

'It's dumb,' Sam mutters.

'Don't care,' Dean retorts.

'I just,' Sam starts again. 'I ...'

'C'mon, spit it out,' Dean says, rolling his eyes like he would any other time Sam was being cagey. That's part of his job too - keep things normal, keep Sam's head in the familiar here-and-now.

'Fine. It's just .. can I sleep with you?' Sam says, almost petulantly, and it's like being eleven again, and Sam's seven, too old to share a bed and too young to stay home alone, too old for a blankie and too young for a gun, awkward in-between age and uncertain about everything except what he wanted.

What harm could it do? 

Dean's got Sam's blood on his hands, is half-hard over it. His baby brother. What _harm_ could it do? The question is how much more can he fuck them up? How much further is there even to go down this road?

What harm could it do? Do you want the list alphabetised, Dean, you stupid, sick fuck? 

'Sure,' Dean says. He washes his hands clean, not that it feels like they ever really can be again, and brings a facecloth over to wipe carefully at Sam's back. He has to follow the direction of the slices he's taken out of his brother's hide, and it doesn't matter how careful he is, they reopen all red and wet and Sam groans a little and rolls into his touch all over again. Sam's gonna be sleeping on his front until they heal, that's for sure. Dean eases him under the sheets, ditches the blankets because they're too heavy for Sam's skin right now and it's a sticky-hot night anyway, gonna make Dean twist and sweat even without his brother all forbidden beside him. He slides in beside Sam and tries not to touch. 

'I wish you'd let me say thank you,' Sam mutters after a few minutes. 'I wish you wouldn't push me away.'

Dean pretends to be asleep.

***

Sometime later in the dark, Dean wakes up, disoriented and afraid in his bones. His hand finds the bowie knife under his pillow until he realises the noise that woke him is his brother. 

'Dean,' Sam moans. He's moving under the sheets, scrabbling at his own back with both hands, and Dean realises not all the dark patches on the white motel poly/cotton blend are shadows just as he realises that Sam's basically clawing himself open. 'Help,' Sam says, and his eyes are wide and white at the edges. 'Please, Dean, I can't reach, and he's - he won't -'

Dean reaches over and lays a sweaty palm on the mess of lines around the scar on Sam's spine, and it has to sting like a bitch but it makes Sam whimper brokenly and his harp-strung muscles relax, and he softens under Dean's hand. 

'This isn't working, is it?' Dean murmurs, when Sam's calm, petting him like he's a spooked animal and trying to ignore the slickness against his hand and the smell of blood in the room. 'Sammy?'

'It just … it doesn't last long,' Sam says. 'And then he gets back in.' He sounds _apologetic_ , fuck, like this is his fault somehow when it's on Dean to make this work. 

He's supposed to be _good_ at making people hurt, isn't he? How much more of a fuck-up can he be that even after ten years of Hell's finest tuition he can't give his brother something that will hurt him the right way?

Sam curls into Dean closer, shifts onto his side and Dean almost says something like, _no, Sammy, you'll open those cuts up_ at the same time as he's making space and putting an arm around Sam's shoulders, until he realises that's probably the point. Sam buries his face somewhere around Dean's armpit, and Dean strokes lightly over his hurts and tries to think.

Something that will last. Cuts knit too fast, and Dean won't let Sam let them fester, because it'd probably work for a while but the last thing Sam needs is a case of blood poisoning on top of hallucinations and a brother whose hands shake over hurting him for his own good. 

Sam pushes into him even closer. He's half-hard against Dean's hip, rocking closer and Dean feels the slices in Sam's skin ride against his fingerprints as Sam moves. It's not about getting off, Dean knows, it's just endorphins, Sam riding the high of getting hurt. But he'll feel better if he gets off, Dean figures, so he rolls onto his side too and presses his forehead to Sam's. 

'C'mon, Sammy,' he murmurs, stroking Sam's hip, uncut and smooth. He can help with this too. 

Sam squirms against him, panting against his mouth, and his eyes flutter closed and snap open over and over. He grabs Dean, slides his fingers up into Dean's hairline, and he looks tortured and guilty and driven nuts when he hisses 'Touch me, Dean, please, God, _touch me,'_ through his gritted teeth and he isn't allowed to look like that, that's the whole point, so Dean slides his hand down from Sam's hip to his dick. No room for embarrassment. He used to wash Sam when he was a baby, taught him to piss standing up, told him about jerking off when he was thirteen and red-faced and grossed-out by the whole thing, he can do this. 

It's not about what he wants. It doesn't matter what he wants. This is for Sam.

Sam comes choking, lunges for Dean's mouth while he's spurting all over Dean's belly, and they share a confused and bruising kiss that makes Dean hard enough to pound nails, covered in his baby brother's spunk, before Dean wrenches himself back and lets go of Sam as softly as he can. The washcloth is still on the bedside table, and Dean's hands shake when he gropes for it. 

Sam groans against Dean's mouth as Dean wipes him clean. Dean tries to look him in the eye but he's gone again, looking through Dean at something only he can see in the dark. It shouldn't be a surprise. Orgasm isn't a defence against Satanvision or Dean'd be hiring Sam as many hookers as he wanted instead of cutting him open - he already knew that. But somehow he kind of hoped, maybe like this, maybe … if it was him ...

It doesn't matter that Cas pulled Dean out of Hell. There's no way he isn't going back. 

When he wakes up in the morning, Sam's in the other bed. Dean's bed is smeared with blood and smells of sex. Neither of them says anything about last night.

Neither of them says anything about it at all, not the pain, not the sex, not the stains, for two days. Sam fronts like the con-man he is, and Dean could almost pretend that his brother was back to normal except for how sometimes his eyes wander like he's not just zoning out but checking out, and sometimes he grabs at the meat of his hand all white-knuckled, except that doesn't work any more. Dean wishes it did. 

He's got an idea for a replacement, though - something that will satisfy Sam, hold the Devil at bay maybe for longer than it takes a cut to stop stinging, but he can't be the one to bring it up. That's not how this works. 

Sam plucks up the stones to ask two nights later, leaning against the bathroom doorframe like he's being casual, like Dean can't see that he's using the hardwood moulding to gouge at the remains of the healing cuts on his back, and Dean's grateful to have had the thinking time because it means he can follow 'yeah, sure thing, Sam, you know that,' with 'and, uh, I had an idea ...'

He lays Sam down on his back on the bed this time, and God, he has to be gentle, clinical, professional, can't think about how Sam's getting hard and breathing ragged even while he shies at things Dean can't see like they're realer than the world. But he needs Sam to understand what he's gonna suggest, so he slaps him hard twice on the cheek until his eyes unglaze and catch-focus on Dean's face. 

'You with me?' Dean asks him softly. 

'Yeah,' Sam says. 'I'm with you.' 

'Cos I got something new for you, but you gotta tell me it's okay, alright Sam? I need you to give me the go-ahead before I do this.'

Sam sucks in a juddering breath. 'What?' he asks. 

Dean shows him his zippo and the little leaf-bladed knife he picked for this, that he spent last night carefully blunting. 'It'll last better,' he says helplessly. 'I heat the blade, let it … jesus fuck, let it burn you. God.' He hates hearing himself like this. It's like the thing they used to do, showing him the instruments of torture to freak him out, only Sam's expression isn't afraid, it's hungry, it's _starving_. 'If I do it somewhere you can reach, you can … you can use it the way you used to use the hand cut. We'll keep it clean, it'll heal up healthy -'

Sam offers up the soft brown inside of his forearm before Dean can pull himself out of his downward babbling spiral. 'Do it,' he says. 'Do it now.'

***

The flick-click of the zippo is too loud. Dean hates it. He's pulled Sam up to sit against the head board rather than lie down - he's going to keep this to one place. He's gonna be controlled. He kneels over Sam's long, long legs and they both watch the flame lick around the steel. 

Sam breathes in the scent of hot metal like he's gonna get high off it, licks his lips when Dean drops the lighter and reaches for his arm instead. 

The noise he makes when Dean presses the knifeblade against his skin is the same one he made when he was coming in Dean's hand. But when he looks up into Dean's face this time his eyes are clear and his mouth is parted and he's almost smiling, and Dean feels that surge of hope and relief he always get when Sam surfaces like this. 

'Feels good, Dean,' Sam says in a low voice. 'Keep going.'

Flick-click and wait, and the knifeblade heats again, and Dean puts it to his brother's soft forearm again and again and again; heat, pause, pressure, groan, Sam's eyes getting dilated and Dean's dick so hard in his pants he thinks he might die. It jerks every time Sam moans, leaks mess so his underwear is almost unbearably slick-wet and sticky, but he can't think about that when he's got Sam glowing more than the spitting-hot knife under his hands. 

When there are five oval burns glaring red on Sam's arm, he stops, and has to force himself not to grab at his own dick. Sam's face is open and wracked with that sweet adoration of pain Dean remembers from when everything got tangled up, below, and he didn't know what was pulling his strings any more. He looks down at Sam's arm so that he doesn't have to look in Sam's eyes.

It looks like he's wrapped a burning hand there, seared his fingerprints into Sam's skin. Sam reaches over with his other hand and pushes the pads of his fingers into the marks, and his breathing goes shuddery again for a moment. 'Fuck, Dean,' he says. 'I - will you -'

'What do you need, Sammy?' Dean asks. His fingers seek out the zippo from where he dropped it. 'Anything, I promise, just tell me -'

Sam reaches up and pulls Dean's mouth down to meet his. He kisses like he's so hot for it he's going to go up in flames, and when Dean has to settle on Sam's lap or overbalance, Sam's _hard_. Hard like he's been waiting for it this whole time. 'Need _you_ , Dean,' Sam pants. 'Need you in me. Want you touching me all the time. You're stone number one, remember?'

'Sam, I don't -' Dean starts, stutters, because he's got no condoms, no lube, got rid of them all because he thought he could ditch temptation that way, but his fingers are already going to Sam's fly, zippo forgotten, knife forgotten. 'I don't have anything,' he says angrily, angry with himself, but Sam grabs him before he can pull back, crushes them back together.

'Don't care,' Sam whispers into Dean's ear. 'Want it to burn.'

***

Dean can see every single slice he ever made in Sam's hide like this, with Sam on his knees and puddling down into the sheets til his forearms are stretched out flat on the bed in front of him, head hanging low, fingers twitching, and the five red burns branding Dean's touch into his skin are lit like beacons in Dean's fuzzing vision. 

Sam took Dean's fingers the same way he took his knife; with a screwed-up kind of joy. Kept running his own hand up and down his arm and his dick letting out slick that Dean licked up and, after a quick and ferocious argument with himself, used to push Sam open even further on his tongue. And then, rolled over and pulled up onto his knees, Dean pushed Sam open on his dick, sliding through spit and Sam's own fucking bodily fluids, and maybe this is better than the last time because they're not doing this in the dark and there's no blood involved, _but fucking your little brother isn't better, is it Dean? Remember how you weren't gonna do this?_

'Oh, fuck, Dean, yes,' Sam pants. 'Need it, Dean, need it so bad, just like that -' and that's Dean shoving in til he's as far as he'll go, hard up against Sam's ass. Sam rolls his neck so he can look at Dean, and Dean isn't sure he's ever seen anyone look that blissed-out before. And he feels good, weak-knee good, fucking bare inside Sam's tight hole, so maybe he can understand that, and maybe, just maybe, it isn't so bad to take something you want if you're giving the other person the thing they need at the same time - and then Sam groans, jerking up and coming like he doesn't expect it, and clenching, and Dean doesn't realise he's got his teeth buried somewhere near Sam's jugular and his nails scoring those brands, puffy and welted now and giving way, delicate abused skin all at Dean's tender fucking mercies. 'Ohhhhh, fuck, _fuck_ , you make it hurt so good -' Sam moans, and Dean comes like that, like the words have burnt it out of him. 

Dean's come is dripping out of his baby brother's ass and Sam's blood is welling up under Dean's fingers again, and Sam's fucked-out satisfied, letting out little whines and _unnhh_ noises as Dean pulls out of him. Dean's head is full of memories, except every single one of them is wearing Sam's face now, Dean's baby brother burnt into his memory in the role of every soul Dean ever tortured because he enjoyed it. 

'Thank you,' Sam's whispering into the sheets, Dean realises. 'Thank you, Dean. Thank you ...' and he sounds so relieved, like finally, Dean has done something right by his brother.

Oh yeah. Alastair would have fucking loved this.


End file.
